IF the city council wants to collate details of bullying incidents across all its schools it should be able to do so.

Bullying is an issue that can leave children traumatised, and their education damaged and schools need to be using every tool possible to tackle it.

While incidents are recorded school by school the overall picture in the city is not able to be monitored, not because of a lack of willingness but because of technology issues.

Five years is a long time for something as simple as a change to an IT system to allow statistics to be added up.

Staff at every level, from teachers to the education director, must be able to learn from the experience of others to ensure that the best practice is shared to ensure we get the best outcome for our children.

No-one disputes the council's commitment to tackling bullying and desire to stamp it out, and the problem is technical.

Technology must be harnessed in a way that it is made to work for us and not for it to be a hindrance to progress.

So when the council wants to be able to find out how many cases of bullying there were in Glasgow last year and what categories they fall into it is not acceptable for the computer to say no.